Lalley: Growing city tests every neighborhood

Feb. 23, 2014

We are starkly different people who want remarkably similar things in The Best Little City in America.

A little peace and quiet.

A reasonable sense of security.

A small patch of green space.

That’s true whether you live along the tony streets of the southern hills or in the modest homes of the old John Morrell neighborhoods down in the valley.

We are divided by station, but not expectation.

No matter where you live these days, it seems, you’ve got something planned near your home that you do not want.

We’re voting on two of them in April.

The Walmart at 85th Street and Minnesota Avenue is the highest profile example of a micro question gone macro. Most residents of the city probably don’t have a great sense of the geometry of this issue, but we’re going to vote anyway.

In fact, most residents of the city probably will make their decision less on the spatial issues — where the store is planned — than on the perception of the owner. Yet the economics of Walmart are not on the ballot.

It’s much the same with an outdoor pool at Spellerberg Park. The micro issue is whether to replace the old traditional pool with an updated, but still outdoor, version.

There’s more at work in this decision, however. The debate started with the idea of an indoor aquatic center, and for almost all the good people of Sioux Falls, that’s still the crux of it.

This week, another kerfuffle emerged when the folks living in the neighborhood just east of downtown rose up against a plan by the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls to open a shelter and resource center for the homeless in an old warehouse on Indiana Avenue. Again, it’s a spot that many residents of our community couldn’t find on a map. But the folks who live there say they’ve had enough influx of social service agencies for now, and it’s time for someone else to pick up the slack.

There’s a pretty decent argument that the homeless center as proposed actually would provide remedy for area residents, who complain of a current level of vagrancy that is beyond annoying. The assertion is that The Bishop Dudley Hospitality House — an appropriate honor for a man who always had the least among us in his heart — could keep people off the streets and away from area residents’ plot of green space.

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We’re not voting on that one — yet.

I’ve got no great insight into how all this is going to shake out come April, beyond my own perceptions of voters in The Best Little City in America, which we discuss at length on the Tuesday edition of “100 Eyes.” (Live at 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday on ArgusLeader.com.)

Clearly the familiar “Not in My Backyard” theme twines through each issue.

It’s an affliction for which there is no easy cure.

We all have it.

It’s no use pointing fingers from one sector of the city to another.

Maybe what we need is to have a big “Wheel of NIMBY” bolted to the side of City Hall.

Whenever we need to build a new public facility or replace an old one ...

Whenever there’s cause for expanding our boundaries to open developable land ...

Whenever we need to open our arms to whatever ills life can throw our way ...

Just spin the wheel.

Think for a moment if the three points of contention currently before us were shifted 120 degrees clockwise. The Bishop Dudley center could move to 85th Street, the Walmart to Spellerberg and an indoor pool at Indiana Avenue.

Oh, that’s right. We already tried the indoor pool bit on the east side.

That’s out.

Turn the dial another 120 degrees.

The homeless go to Spellerberg, the Walmart is on the East Bank and the indoor pool is almost in Harrisburg.

That makes even less sense.

The problem with living in a city — with fire and police protection, tons of amenities and the convenience of any retail good within easy biking distance — is that, eventually, we all have to give a little for the greater good.

At some point, everybody feels as though city planners are poking an arbitrary stick in their eye.

There are reasons, however, whether economic, social or geography.

It’s not always easy to hear or see the best solution from our individual view of things.